The farmer organisations on Wednesday reached out to the Centre for cooperation to help the sugarcane farmers get payments from sugar millers. Farmers of 13 sugarcane-growing States met the Union Cabinet Ministers to resolve the arrears crisis.
Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan called the meeting, Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari, MoS Agriculture Sanjeev Balyan, Petroleoum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan were also present there. Another meeting will be held on Thursday between the Centre and the Chief Ministers of these thirteen States to workout a solution.
During the consultations, farmers criticised the State Governments for not taking proactive steps in clearing their arrears and sought the Centre’s direct intervention in getting back their money. They suggested that some part of the subsidy to millers should go to farmers directly.
The sugar industry is finding difficulty in paying cane price to farmers as mills have been incurring losses for the last few years due to low realisation and high production cost. The cane arrears has touched Rs19,243 crores so far. Uttar Pradesh tops the list of the States with sugarcane arrears, at Rs9,715.69 crore, followed by Maharashtra at Rs2,864 crore and Karnataka at Rs2,402.39 crore.
The farmers also sought a hike in import duty on sugar from present 25 per cent to 40 per cent to discourage imports. Paswan assured the farmers that the Food Ministry would write to Commerce Ministry recommending a hike in import duty on sugar. In August last year, import duty on both raw and refined sugar was raised to 25 per cent from 15 per cent to bail out the cash-starved sugar industry.
“Problems of cane farmers are complex. There were 14 farmers organisations present in the meeting. They made five key demands, including complete ban on sugar import or hike in import duty and creation of buffer stock of three million tonnes,” Paswan said. He, however, added that there is not much imports happening at even 25 per cent duty.
The farmers organisations also demanded focus on ethanol and government control on supply of sugar in the domestic market. Nearly 80 per cent of the entire sugar consumption is with the industries and farmers suggested industries should be sold sugar at a higher rate than what is sold to domestic consumers.